Wisconsin Belgian Red

This is a renowned microbrewery beer, made by a small outfit in New Glarus, Wisconsin. It is one the few beers well-spoken of that I never had - until recently when fellow SB member Bob (don't know his surname) gifted it to me at the last Gazebo.

Coming off a cold that sent me to Hades and back (I think), I thought I'd try something new and offer some taste notes.

First, a toast to Bob for the kindness of his gesture: a number of people have done similar in SB including Randy Goode, Lenell Smothers, Randy Blank, Cliff Michel, Tim Sousley and Roger Hodges. I am in the debt of all of you and will try to reciprocate.

Now a taste note: there is a fresh cherry nose to this brew which is most appetizing. I get a taste that is reminiscent of a fresh sweet fleshy American cherry - the type used is Montmorency from Door County, Wisconsin.

There are also notes of almond, which probably comes from using the cherry stones as well (ground or broken when added to the barley malt and wheat ferment with the cherries).

The taste of the beer is sweet and very similar to American cherry pie! There are sub-acid notes as well, so the medicinal sweetness, while pleasing and (surely) destructive of any lingering beasties which would bring my cold back - reason enough to pound this down - is balanced by a pleasant skein of bitter/acid which lends complexity.

It is quite different to any Belgian kriek beer I've had and as good, just different.

The use of fruits in brewing is no gimmick, it is an age-old practice in most of the traditional brewing countries except it died out in most of them until revived here and there under influence from Belgian specialists like Liefman and the various lambic brewers who throw in some cherries or raspberries for the secondary to add extra fermentable sugar and flavor.

Thanks Bob, for this great treat, it is the perfect early libation for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

I was so not impressed with their Uff Da and Spotted Cow that it was a long time before I tried any of their other beers. My loss. I guess I can't blame them for making unobjectionable mainstream beers to pay the bills and sell to the tourists.

Southern Wisconsin is home to a lot of nice breweries. One of the things I miss most about working in Milwaukee is being able to swing by Sprecher to pick up beer (and soft drinks) and take the Lakefront tour (although I liked it a lot better at the old location). Oh, and the Ale House in the third ward.

I also miss shopping for factory seconds at Usinger's and hitting the spice shop across the street, but that's not drink related.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

Gary i`m very curious about that Wisconsin Belgian red,is it something similair as the red beers as Vos or Rodenbach or is it more like kriekbeer?There`s also a beer i can recommand you it is called Bourgogne des Flandres crispy and fruity but strong,also a bit red in colour.Perhaps this was the inspiration?
Eric.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

Its inspiration would have been kriek bier from Belgium but it has developed clearly some of its own specificity.

Most kriek bier uses a lambic beer base, i.e., a wheat and malt brew fermented with wild yeast. New Glarus uses I understand an ale yeast which incorporates some wild strains but it is not fermented in the open air purely from wild airborne yeast I believe. The taste suggests a standard yeast with some wild influence, in fact, this is what I meant by "sub-acid". Liefman's kriek uses the house's sour-style brown ale as the base. Liefman's yeast probably also is a mix of a cultured and some wild strains but the Liefman brown beers too are not wild yeast brews like lambics and do not contain wheat I would think (or not very much).

Rodenbach and that style of East Flanders red ale did not generally incorporate fruit additions but was not dissimilar in palate to some lambic due to containing a component that was intentionally soured by long oak vat aging. However, Rodenbach has at least one expression today that is sweetened by the addition of a fruit extract. So the "sour-sweet" taste is part of its character today and in this sense the beer is part of this larger family of fruited sour-sweet ales.

So I would say the New Glarus beer presents a definite connection to all these Belgian beers in its light sourness. It seems connected to the kriek-lambics in the sense of using a wheat-and-malt base, but also to the cherry-macerated ales likes Liefman's which is not wild-fermented as such.

I assume that in all these beers where a substantial fruit taste subsists (as definitely New Glarus), either the fruit is added after the beer is finished or is added to assist fermentation and a way is found to retain the fruit taste after packaging.

Pasteurisation is possibly used by some of these brewers since if it is not I would think fermentation would proceed in the bottle (or tank earlier) and eat up the fruit sugars so no taste of fruit would subsist or very little. It may be that a good filtration is enough to preserve the unfermented fruit sugars for long enough before consumption.

However it is done by each producer, the style is certainly a very notable one. Liefman's version is more tart than New Glarus' and reflects the use of a different type of cherry.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

You took away my curiosity by telling it was a cherrybeer,i thougt that the name red represented a "red"beer,we use that term here for certain types of beer i mentioned.Kriekbeers are one of my favorites to drink,in summer then that is,but that`s were my interests in fruitbeers stop,raspberrybeer is a product put on the market by some smart guys but it is not a genuine historical beer like the Kriek is.The Belle-Vue brewery had at one time even a bananabeer,don`t bother drink that.In Holland we have now a beer made from some non-edible coconut called Mongozobeer,it has a very fresh but strange taste,the brewer is a African guy that has his recipe from his mother in Angola only he too is making banana and other fruitbeers that make my eyebrows raise.Do you expect that those Wisconsinbeers are to be exported to our side of the big foam?
Eric.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

Thanks, Eric. Liefman has also made a raspberry version (frambozenbier) for many years and raspberry addition was also a tradition amongst some kriek-lambic producers. Other fruits seem of more recent usage although I suspect apple somewhere too played a role, maybe in the distant past (it seems to pop up here and there in the West in the form of apple-flavoured beers, or cider-beer hybrids, and these are very old mixtures I think, as are honey and barley malt beers). I am sure some of these North American fruited beers are available from beer specialty import companies in Belgium and Holland. Unibroue from Quebec has exported its beers to Europe and it counts amongst its range an excellent apple beer, and one made with cherries too except in its case it advises to consume the beer warmed.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

A North American ale made more in the style of East Flanders' sour beers is la Folie from New Belgium Brewing in Colorado, an excellent product.

Russian River Brewing in - Santa Rosa, CA! - makes an interesting red ale too broadly in the Belgian style. When I first read about sour aged red beers in Michael Jackson's books 30 years ago I never thought I'd see the day when some brewers would undertake the style here. And when eating pizza at Russian River with some SB-ers over the summer we were gazing at racks of beers aging in big wooden barrels on the second floor, it looked for all the world like a corner of a Kentucky rack house. For a moment there I thought I WAS in Kentucky, but that's what SB company, two days of bourbon and strong ales can do to you.

Re: Wisconsin Belgian Red

Unibroue's apple infuenced Ephemere is one of my favorites when I can find it. Unfortunately I find the version with currants much more often and don't care as much for it. The apple in Ephemere is merely a wisp, just enough to allow me to notice it but not enough to overpower. Many of the other fruit flavored beers I've tried put in too much extract (The local microbrewery Ed and I visited when he was in town said they use extracts because of FDA regularions on using fresh fruits if I remember correctly) and there is a fine line between the essence and the dominance in a lighter beer.